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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01081 1583
BRIG .- GEN. GEORGE H. CHAPMAN AND STAFF.
History
OF THE
Third Indiana Cavalry
BY
W. N. Pickerill
Indianapolis, Indiana
1906
AETNA PRINTING CO. INDIANAPOLIS
1200323
DEDICATION.
To the brave men of the Third Indiana Cavalry who served in the Civil War, whether now living or sleeping where loving hands have laid them, or in unknown and unmarked graves, in Southern lands, this volume is affectionately inscribed.
026
PREFACE.
One hundred and thirty volumes, published by authority of Congress, and entitled "The War of the Rebellion, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies," are supposed to contain a history of every military organization serving on either side of the mighty conflict, known as the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865.
To read the story of a regiment, as the government has preserved it, in all these numerous volumes, which as a rule are only found in public libraries, or in the collections of a few fortunate indi- viduals, would be the work of a good part of the lifetime of many of those who survive, but had somewhat to do with the great struggle. To serve these worthy men, their families, and those who have gone out from among us, but have left posterity, to whom their memories and deeds of valor are very precious, this history of the Third Indiana Cavalry has been prepared.
Much of what is herein offered to those who read this book was written-at the time when the deeds herein recorded were enacted -by those in authority, and while those deeds were fresh in the minds of the participants. This volume is more a compilation of what others, better qualified, have written than a narration in the writer's own language of the interesting story of one of the most splendid regiments that served in the Civil War. The records are referred to by volume and page, so that it will always be possible for the doubting to verify the correctness of what is herein writ- ten, should they have access to the records. Many things still vivid in our memories, the recital of which would tell an interest- ing story of the valor and devotion to duty of our comrades, never found a place in any record or report, as seems to have been neces- sarily true of any regiment in the cavalry service, while others,
for whose omission there seems hardly to be any excuse, have been preserved in the reports of famous leaders of our enemies, whom we met on many a well contested field.
The daily life of the common soldier, as it was lived in our war, in camp, on the march, on picket, in the hospital, in captivity in Southern prisons, and on the battlefield, can never be under- stood or fully appreciated except by those who lived that life, and its portrayal, that others may realize it as we realized it, must ever remain unwritten history.
Indianapolis, May, 1906.
History of the Third Indiana Cavalry.
CHAPTER I.
The period for which seventy-five thousand troops had been enlisted was nearing its close and little had been accomplished in the way of ending the rebellion, while with each passing day the rebellion itself grew to more formidable proportions, and its pro- moters became more defiant and confident of their ability to cope with any force the government at Washington might send against them. This was the situation long before the term of enlistment of the first seventy-five thousand volunteers had expired.
On the first day of July, 1861, came the battle of Bull Run at Manassas, Virginia, in which the best troops at the disposal of the government met a superior body of troops under General Beaure- gard, in which the government forces were completely routed and fled in confusion to the defenses of Washington, pursued by the victorious confederates with the evident purpose of taking pos- session of and holding the Capital of the country. They paused on the west bank of the Potomac, almost within cannon shot of where Congress was sitting, and made their camp there for months.
The seriousness of the situation now took possession of the people both North and South. In the North the feeling of con- sternation among those who believed the government should be upheld gave place to a grim determination that the government must be sustained at all hazards, and in no section of the entire country was this feeling more intense than in the State of Indiana. From the very first Governor Morton was apparently impressed with the impending tragedy, and while he promptly equipped and
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
hurried to the field the forty-six hundred and eighty men called for by President Lincoln's first proclamation, he foresaw that he would soon be called on for additional troops by the general govern- ment, and within five days after he had issued his first call he tendered the Secretary of War six additional regiments without limitation as to the time they were to serve, assuring that official that they would be ready for the service within five days after acceptance. He received no response to this offer, but at once set about putting six additional regiments in camp under discipline and held them subject to the demand of the government. There were in Camp Morton twenty-nine companies in excess of the number of men required to fill the first call for troops, and sixty- eight companies had been raised in different parts of the State and tendered to the Governor for active service; and the Governor on his own responsibility determined to organize five regiments of "twelve-months" men for the defense of the State, or for the general service, as the future might require, the regiments to be composed of the first fifty companies already raised. All volun- teers who had enlisted for three months and were unwilling to enlist for one year were directed to be discharged.
Although among many of those desiring to enlist there was a strong inclination to enter the cavalry service, yet by reason of the position taken by General Winfield Scott, the head of the army, organizations for this branch of the service had not been encour- aged by the authorities ; but, on the 10th of June, 1861, in pur- suance to instructions from the War Department, orders were issued for the organization of a cavalry regiment in the counties of Indiana bordering on the Ohio river, and camps of rendezvous were established at Evansville and Madison. The organization of eight companies was completed at Evansville and mustered in on the 20th of August, 1861, with Conrad Baker as colonel and Scott Carter, of Vevay, Switzerland county, as lieutenant-colonel. The eight companies at Evansville under Colonel Baker, on the
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
21st of August, 1861, were ordered to St. Louis, Missouri. The five companies organized at Madison under Lieutenant-Colonel Carter, and the one company organized at Indianapolis, which was ordered to proceed to Madison and join the companies already there, were mustered into the service on the 22d day of August, 1861, and were ordered to the Army of the Potomac under Lieu- tenant-Colonel Carter, and on the 22d of October, 1861, by general orders of the Adjutant-General of the United States, these six companies united with four companies which had been accepted in September and October, 1861, and ordered to Kentucky, were designated as the Third Cavalry (Forty-fifth Regiment). In December, 1862, two new companies were organized and added to the regiment.
The six companies that had been ordered to the Army of the Potomac were designated as Companies A, B, C, D, E and F, and the four companies that had been ordered to Kentucky were des- ignated as Companies G, H, I and K. The officers of the six com- panies were mustered to date from the 22d of August, 1861, and the officers of the respective companies as originally organized were as follows: Company A, Captain Jacob S. Buchanan, First Lieutenant William Patton, Second Lieutenant Robert P. Porter ; Company B, Captain James D. Irwin, First Lieutenant Benjamin Q. A. Gresham, Second Lieutenant Marshall Lahue; Company C, Captain Theophilus M. Danglade, First Lieutenant Charles Lemon, Second Lieutenant Paul Clark; Company D, Captain Daniel P. Keister, First Lieutenant Mathew B. Mason, Second Lieutenant Henry F. Wright; Company E, Captain William S. McClure, First Lieutenant George H. Thompson, Second Lieu- tenant Abner L. Shannon ; Company F, Captain Patrick Carland, First Lieutenant Oliver M. Powers, Second Lieutenant Thomas M. Moffitt; Company G, Captain Felix W. Graham, First Lieu- tenant George F. Herriott, Second Lieutenant John S. Kephart; Company H, Captain Alfred Gaddis, First Lieutenant Joseph M.
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
Douglas, Second Lieutenant Uriah Young; Company I, Captain Will C. Moreau, First Lieutenant Tighlman Fish, Second Lieu- tenant Oliver Childs; Company K, Captain Robert Klein, First Lieutenant Christoph Roll, Second Lieutenant George Klein. Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Carter was named as colonel of the new regiment upon its organization, and First Lieutenant George H. Thompson, of Company E, was detailed as adjutant.
On the 21st of October, 1861, Elias W. H. Beck was mustered in as surgeon, Luther Brosie as assistant surgeon of the regiment, George H. Chapman as major. On the 8th of November, 1861, Captain Jacob S. Buchanan, of Company A, was promoted and mustered in as lieutenant-colonel. On the 15th of December, 1861, First Lieutenant William Patton, of Company A, was pro- moted and mustered in as captain of the company to fill the va- cancy created by the promotion of Captain Buchanan to lieu- tenant-colonel, and First Lieutenant Charles Lemon was promoted and mustered captain of Company C to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Captain Danglade, of that company.
The officers of this newly named regiment, like the men, as to former vocations in life, were a motley aggregation, and the entire organization perhaps knew less about war than any other matter. The colonel and lieutenant-colonel had been attorneys-at-law in their respective homes, and it was said the former had seen service in the Mexican war. Major Chapman had been a midshipman in the navy, editor of two or three newspapers, attorney-at-law and a clerk in one of the departments at Washington. Other company officers had been farmers, teachers, tailors, steamboatmen, livery stable keepers, merchants, and one captain had been a minister in the Methodist church fresh from his pulpit, while his orderly sergeant was a storming Universalist preacher who never hesi- tated to combat the theology of any one, regardless of rank, whose theology conflicted with his peculiar views.
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
The six companies ordered from Madison to the Army of the Potomac were loaded on steamboats chartered by the government and started up the Ohio river. On board the Stephen Decatur this theologically belligerent orderly sergeant preached to the prospective soldiers on board a sermon full of comfort to those who were doubtful of their future state. At this time men and officers alike were kindergarten pupils in the art of war. Their equipments were halters for the horses, uniforms, spurs and blankets for the men, except the officers who had drawn upon their home resources, gorgeously uniformed themselves and were mag- nificently mounted with trappings that inspired the envy of their men. Solomon in all his glory was hardly arrayed like unto one of these. The steamboats transporting these six companies strug- gled with low water and sandbars in the Ohio river until Wheel- ing, Virginia, was reached, when water transportation was aban- doned entirely and the command took to the mountains, heading towards Pittsburg.
On this march the men first developed soldierly qualities, which they learned to cultivate and improve upon during the entire period of service. As they traveled across the country the farm houses along the way were besieged by the men for wheat sacks or anything else out of which they could improvise some sort of a saddle, by stuffing the same with straw, while clotheslines pro- cured in the same manner were cut into lengths and used for stirrups. Thus mounted and guiding their horses with only the halters, which the government had furnished, and directed by their gaily caparisoned officers, the aggregation afforded a spec- tacle for gods and men. But aside from these disfiguring accoutre- ments, the battalion was a splendid body of fine looking young men, each of whom in his own right owned a good Indiana horse, and they were on the way to the Capital of their country to be equipped as cavalry soldiers in her service, and the loyal people of Virginia and Pennsylvania gave us a royal welcome, fed us on
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
the fat of the land, and bade us good-bye with their blessing. After three days, never to be forgotten, we reached Pittsburg, were loaded into cars, such as they hauled soldiers in, and after a day and night on the railroad we were dropped down, in the night, at the Baltimore depot in the city of Washington.
On their arrival at Washington City in the early days of Sep- tember, 1861, the six companies of the Third Indiana Cavalry, that had been ordered from Madison, Indiana, to the Army of the Potomac, were assigned to a camp on the northeastern out- skirt of the city, where they were further partially equipped, being furnished with saddles and bridles for the horses, haversacks, canteens, sabers and dragoon pistols. This latter implement of war was better known by those unfamiliar with martial parlance as the "horse pistol," perhaps because the cavalry soldiers of the old regular army were called dragoons and they carried two of these pistols in holsters fastened on the front part of their saddles. It was about a foot long and was loaded at the muzzle by means of an iron ramrod attached to the under side of the barrel and when fired kicked about as hard as it would shoot, and the man behind it was in more danger than the man in front. It was so hard on trigger that when the marksman took aim at the enemy by the time his pistol was discharged he was liable to be shooting at the men in his own regiment. In practicing marksmanship it was never wise to choose for a mark anything smaller than a good sized barn, and if right-handed when you aimed at one end you would hit the other or miss the mark entirely. This was the weapon with which Southern chivalry fought duels in the days when dueling was fashionable, and after our experience we could understand how duelists were sometimes hurt or killed because they stood with their backs to each other and at the count of "One, two, three," they wheeled and fired, and in the grand sweep some- body might accidentally be hit, but it was just as likely to be the seconds or bystanders as the combatants. Certainly our fore-
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
fathers who attended duels were brave men and took their lives in their hands unless stationed in trees or hid in the bushes on some neighboring farm.
As soon as equipped this battalion began a persistent course of drilling on horseback, with such weapons as the government fur- nished. We practiced jumping our horses over low fences and narrow ravines and gutters with which the clay hillsides around Washington in those days abounded. And in these exercises there was many a miscalculation by the embryo cavalryman. Often he found his horse able to jump but half as high or as far as he had supposed he could, and the last half of the jump would take the form of a somersault, in which the horse would come out on top and the rider underneath or left stranded on the top rail of a fence or in the bottom of a ditch. It was fun for the beholder, but hard on the jumper. In these incipient days of our military prepa- ration we saw a bold orderly sergeant yell in stentorian voice, "Men, follow me when I jump that ditch right there," and with the com- mand he plunged his spurs into the protuberant flanks of his big Indiana plow horse and the next minute the horse, which fell short in his reach, was standing on his head in the ditch and the orderly sergeant was sprawling on his back with canteen, haver- sack, saber and pistol all flying in different directions, much to the amusement of the braves who were bringing up the rear. This was one of the amusing things in our early cavalry drill, but in due season we were sent to the division of General Hooker, at Bladensburg, where duels were fought by our revolutionary sires (with horse pistols, no doubt).
The battalion continued its drill exercises after it went into camp at Bladensburg, and when General Hooker with his division was ordered to Budds Ferry, Maryland, twenty-five miles south of Washington on the lower Potomac, it continued a part of his command and was the only cavalry with him. About December, 1861, Companies B and F were sent still further south into St.
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
Marys county, Maryland, and Company E into Charles county, near Port Tobacco. The population of this section of the country was thoroughly in sympathy with the South and slavery in its purity had existed there for more than a hundred years; slave property was the principal thing of value there when the war broke out. The region was on a direct line between Washington and Richmond, and the lower Potomac was constantly being crossed by people going from one point to the other. The confederate authorities at Richmond were kept as well informed regarding all military movements within the federal lines as were the federal authorities themselves.
The three companies sent into these counties were under the command of Major Chapman, who established his headquarters at Leonardtown, the county seat of St. Marys county, and dis- tributed his men in small squads at various points along the Potomac from Chaptico to the mouth of the Pautuxent river, and it was their duty to patrol the river and picket the mouths of the numerous creeks flowing into the river from the Maryland side. Contraband traffic of all kinds with Virginia was carried on to and from the mouths of these creeks by means of small sail and row boats managed by a desperate class of negroes and white men for the compensation which blockade runners were willing to pay for their services. This part of the river was patrolled by a flotilla of gunboats under the commond of Commodore McRae, of the navy, but it seemed to be an easy matter for the blockade runners, in these small row and sail boats, in the stillness of the night, as was usually the case, to dodge past the gunboats and put into the mouth of some creek, and thus escape capture at their hands. The men of the Third Indiana Cavalry on picket at these points accom- plished what the gunboats failed to accomplish, and many of the blockade runners fell into their hands, after escaping the gun- boats, and were hurried away to General Hooker's headquarters to be dealt with as his judgment directed. This was the winter's
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
work of these three companies, and many of the men, besides being active cavalrymen on land, became skilled in the handling of small boats to such an extent that General Hooker called them his "horse marines."
There were at this time some loyal people in the State of Mary- land and in the person of Hon. Montgomery Blair the State of Maryland was represented in the cabinet of President Lincoln, but we know that the secession thugs of Baltimore welcomed the first federal troops passing through there in April, 1861, "with bloody hands to a hospitable grave," and lower Maryland, which would mean all of the state south of Washington City, was a seething hotbed of disloyalty to the Union. The state did not pass the ordinance of secession, not perhaps because her lawmakers did not wish to, but for the reason that Union troops were located at nearly all points within her borders. The Fugitive Slave Law was still in force and she was protected in her slave property, and her disloyal population was arrogant in its defiance and contempt of the federal authorities. Parties going south into the confed- erate lines, or coming north from rebel territory, reaching this lower Maryland country, found a protector and helper in every resident, and the slave population, which seemed to realize that their days of bondage were nearing the end, was the only draw- back to this being a land of perfect safety for those who were hostile and doing all they could against their government.
Wherever the Union troops marched and fought on Southern soil and where the institution of slavery existed, they found in the slaves themselves trustworthy friends upon whom they could rely for much valuable information as to existing conditions, and this was particularly so in lower Maryland during the first winter of the war of the rebellion. Leonardtown, the county seat of St. Marys county, was the central point of active rebel operations within the federal lines, and these operations were much confused and finally almost completely broken up by the assistance of the
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
slave population in the shape of the information they were con- stantly furnishing to the federal authorities; and when the com- panies of the Third Indiana Cavalry that had wintered in their community were, in March, 1862, recalled to the camp of the regiment at Budds Ferry, where it was a part of General Hooker's division which lay along the Potomac at that point, it was con- fronted by a division of confederates on the Virginia side of the river, which had artillery planted on the bluffs to command the river at that point, and from which it frequently shelled passing United States vessels, and at times varied this work by throwing shells at random into General Hooker's camp, to which he re- sponded with his batteries.
When the Army of the Potomac under General Mcclellan left the defenses of Washington, to begin the Chickahominy campaign of 1862 at Norfolk, Virginia, all the troops of Hooker's division at Budds Ferry, save the Third Indiana Cavalry, joined in the movement, and this left the cavalry in charge of the camps until March 24, 1862, when the battalion was ordered to Washing- ton ; and on May 24, 1862, they were ordered to Thoroughfare Gap, where General Geary was posted with a division of troops watching the operations of Gen. Stonewall Jackson in the Shenan- doah Valley. General Geary at once availed himself of the ser- vices of the Third Indiana, which was the only cavalry at his dis- posal, and from that time on the battalion was actively engaged in scouting in advance of General Geary's division, going to Front Royal and near Winchester, where Jackson had maintained his headquarters after driving General Milroy out of the valley. Early in June, 1862, General Shields' division of Fremont's army had met Jackson's troops at Port Republic, been worsted and retreated to Luray, at which point the battalion joined General Shields and formed his rear guard as he fell back to Front Royal, and was with him as he continued his march to Catletts Station, on the Orange
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
& Alexandria railroad, where he was relieved of command in the field and sent to the Pacific coast.
From this point the battalion crossed the country to Falmouth, Virginia, opposite Fredricksburg, on the Rappahannock river, where it joined the division of Gen. Rufus King, which was a part of General Burnside's command, and was here some weeks scout- ing over the territory lying between Fredricksburg and Rich- mond. This territory was apparently common to the cavalry of both the North and the South, as it was no uncommon occurrence for them to encounter each other during scouting expeditions, and several brisk engagements took place at different points.
In Volume XII, Part 2, page 102, Col. J. Kilpatrick, later famous in the cavalry annals of the war, gives an official account of one of these encounters with the enemy on the 22d of July, 1862, near Carmel Church, south of the Massaponax river, in Caroline county, his command being made up of 390 men from the Second New York (Harris' Light) Cavalry, Third Indiana Cavalry and Fourteenth Brooklyn. Colonel Kilpatrick says: "I reconnoitered the enemy's camp. We occupied a good position on a hill gently sloping towards the river, a fine position for a cavalry fight, and I at once determined to attack him. I directed Major Davies to deploy the carbineers of the Harris Light Cavalry as skirmishers on the right and left of the road and Major Chapman (Third Indiana) to proceed up the road in column of platoons to charge. Major Davies advanced rapidly with his skirmishers, gaining ground to the right for the purpose of flanking the enemy, drawing his skirmishers back and beyond his column in the road. Major Chapman, seeing that this column was about to return, charged most gallantly, routed and pursued the enemy to within sight of Hanover Junction, nearly five miles, destroyed the camp and tents and burned the stores and seven carloads of grain. Sud- denly and unexpectedly a large force of cavalry (afterwards found to be Stewart's) came down on our right. I ordered up the re-
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